Thailand's 18 Oscar picks: It's all about culture
"Kon Khon," Thailand's submission for the 2012 Oscars, was a box office flop, earning around 7 million baht. The recent selection of the Thai traditional-dance melodrama "Kon Khon" (คนโขน) as Thailand's submission to next year's Academy Awards, while controversial because of lack of critical acclaim and box-office success, is hardly surprising.
The Oscar committee of the Federation of National Film Associations of Thailand (FNFAT), with endorsement by the Culture Ministry, has traditionally favored movies that highlight Thai culture and historical events.
But while critics noted the high-minded cultural-preservation ideals of director Sarunyu Wongkrachang, they lambasted "Kon Khon" -- a drama about rival masked-dance troupes -- for its one-dimensional characters, heavy-handed melodrama and an unfocused plot.
In his roundup of the foreign-language nominees, Bangkok Post film critic Kong Rithdee said "Kon Khon" (meaning "men who perform khon") "is a labored promotion of traditional Thai masked dance, and despite that noble purpose, its quality is unarguably subpar."
Not only weren't critics impressed, audiences stayed away and the movie was a flop, earning just around 7 million baht. The Culture Ministry, which helped fund the film, doesn't care.
Since Thailand started sending films to the Oscars in 1984, none have won or made the shortlist of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Rather than winning the Oscar, the goal is to promote Thai culture via the movies, the ministry said in a news release.
It hasn't always been like that. The first submissions in the 1980s and early 1990s were a string of highly acclaimed "social problem" dramas that reflected issues in contemporary society. And, occasionally, Thailand's Oscar picks have actually been great films.
Here's a look at all of them, 18 so far.
1984: "Story of Nam Poo" (น้ำพุ)
What it's about: The teenage son of a famous writer drifts into drug use, becomes hooked on heroin and dies.
Cultural significance: The factual drama is adapted from the book by award-winning writer Suwanni Sukhontha, which she wrote after her son died at age 18 of a heroin overdose.
Singer Amphol Lumpoon stars as the son with theater doyenne Patravadi Mejudhon as the mother.
1989: "The Elephant Keeper" (คนเลี้ยงช้าง)
What it's about: Boonsong the mahout (Sorapong Chatree) and his elephant Tang-On struggle to find work at a time when timber companies are switching to machines and the forests are dwindling.
With nowhere else to turn, they go to work for a dodgy company that's illegally harvesting teak and are caught between the authorities and the violent timber poachers.
Cultural significance: It's a snapshot of a time when elephants –- one of Thailand's national symbols –- were still working the forests and not hauling tourists around, but "The Elephant Keeper" also has a strong environmental message.
It's notable for the documentary-like footage of Thailand's unique wildlife species.
1990: "Song of Chaophraya" (น้องเมีย)
What it's about: A woman grows bored of her life on a sand barge, going up and down the Chao Phraya River, and one day gets off the boat and disappears into the city.
The husband (Sorapong Chatree) goes in search, combing Bangkok's red-light districts while his teenage sister-in-law stays on the boat, holding together the family and their business.
Cultural significance: Another one of Prince Chatrichalerm's "social problem" movies, it's a look at the divide between city and country folks.
1995: "Once Upon a Time ... This Morning" (กาลครั้งหนึ่ง เมื่อเช้านี้)
What it's about: A pre-teen girl and her younger brother are upset that their parents have divorced. They don't want to stay with their mother (Jintara Sukapat) in a cramped apartment.
So, they bundle up their infant brother and the three children set off on a journey across Thailand to go live with their father (Santisuk Promsiri).
While mom and dad put aside their differences to search for their wayward offspring, the kids fall in with a group of drug-dealing homeless boys and are chased by gangsters who prey on children.
Cultural significance: Yet another strong "social problem" movie, it's a look at broken families, homelessness, drugs and the child-prostitution trade.
1997: "Daughter 2" (เสียดาย 2)
What it's about: The virginal 13-year-old daughter of a well-to-do family has a blood disease and contracts HIV through a transfusion.
Cultural significance: At the center of this AIDS drama is a stigmatized upper-middle-class family with a classical-musician Thai father and ballet-teacher farang mother, challenging beliefs that AIDS only afflicted the poor and was transmitted only by sexual activity or through the sharing of drug needles.
As he often did in his movies of the 1970s through the 1990s, Prince Chatrichalerm points an accusing finger at incompetent and corrupt authorities, personified in this case by a snoozing public-health minister, snoring loudly during a researcher's briefing about the disease.
1998: "Who Is Running?" (ท้าฟ้าลิขิต)
What it's about: After his girlfriend is severely injured in a car wreck, a young man is led to believe by a monk that his sweetheart's fate was caused by evil things she did in a past life.
So he sets about to prevent the deaths of five other people in hopes of righting those wrongs.
Cultural significance: Buddhist beliefs about the cycle of karma are woven into a stylish thriller by half of the duo of Bangkok-based Hong Kong twin brothers who would go on to make the huge horror hit "The Eye".
